Health Affairs

Reconceptualizing Health and Health Care: Why Our Cancer Care Delivery System Is In Crisis

Cancer Care System in Crisis Americans fear cancer. In a poll for MetLife, when participants were asked which major disease they feared most, 41 percent said cancer, 31 percent said Alzheimer’s disease, and small percentages of other respondents said...

Published Tue, Sep 23 2014 10:07 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Chronic Care, Health Care Costs, End-of-Life Care, Long-Term Care, Health Care Delivery

State Perspectives On Building Information Technology For Health Reform

Note: This blog summarizes key findings from a report by the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) Study Panel on Health Insurance Exchanges and the Center for Health Policy and Research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The report...

Published Tue, Sep 18 2012 8:29 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Health Reform, Policy, Politics, Insurance, Health IT, States, Medicaid, Children, Innovation, Technology

Health Policy Brief: Improving Care Transitions

The latest Health Policy Brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation looks at efforts to improve care transitions. These are the movements that patients make among health care providers and settings as their needs change during the...

Published Fri, Sep 21 2012 8:58 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Consumers, Policy, Payment, Physicians, Medicare, Quality, Hospitals, Patient Safety

Obesity Epidemic May Make Mortality Gains Short-Lived

For those who assume that the next generation of Americans will live longer than their parents, a new “three-dimensional” method of forecasting vital health statistics shows how this may not prove to be the case. Most Americans enjoy better health today...

Published Thu, Jun 23 2011 8:49 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Nonmedical Determinants, Public Health, Prevention, Chronic Care, Children, Obesity

The $500 Billion Medicare Slowdown: A Story About Part D

A great deal of analysis has been published on the causes of the health care spending slowdown system-wide -- including in the pages of Health Affairs . Much attention in particular has focused on the remarkable slowdown in Medicare spending over the...

Published Tue, Oct 21 2014 11:14 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Policy, Payment, Physicians, Spending, Medicare, Pharma, Hospitals

Health Affairs Web First: Noneconomic Damage Caps Reduced Medical Malpractice Payments, With Varied Effects

With the 2014 election weeks away, a provision of California’s Proposition 46, raising the cap on medical malpractice payments for noneconomic damages, has been in the news. This provision would increase the payment cap from $250,000 to $1.1 million....

Published Wed, Oct 22 2014 1:03 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Policy, Malpractice Liability Reform, Physicians, Workforce, Health Law

Adult Conversation On High-Priced Drugs? Don’t Hold Your Breath (But Hang In There) …

The benevolent identity of the health care enterprise tends to moderate disagreements and keep them under a big tent of shared goals. In the case of very high prices for powerful new drugs, however, the commons gets stretched painfully thin. Drug companies...

Published Mon, Oct 27 2014 12:42 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Consumers, Insurance, Chronic Care, Health Care Costs, Pharma, Biotech, Business of Health Care

Health Affairs Briefing: Collaborating For Community Health

Policymakers are paying increasing attention to the relationship between the characteristics of communities and the health of the people living in them. The November 2014 issue of Health Affairs , "Collaborating For Community Health , " examines...

Published Wed, Oct 29 2014 1:14 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Nonmedical Determinants, Public Health, Health Philanthropy

Learning From Missed Opportunities To Diagnose US Ebola Patient Zero

Over a century ago American physician Richard Cabot wrote about misdiagnoses, recognizing: “A goodly number of ‘classic’ time-honored mistakes in diagnosis are familiar to all experienced physicians because we make them again and again. Some of these...

Published Thu, Oct 30 2014 11:17 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Public Health, Physicians, Health IT, Workforce, Hospitals, Health Care Delivery, Podcast

Meeting Quality Targets May Yield Only Modest Savings By Medicare ACOs

The Medicare Shared Savings Program, created under the Affordable Care Act, provides bonus payments to participating accountable care organizations (ACOs) that are successful in both lowering health costs in Medicare Parts A and B while meeting specified...

Published Fri, Oct 05 2012 7:41 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Policy, Spending, Medicare, Quality

Proportion Of Those With High Medical Costs Unchanged During Recent Recession

During a recession one would expect the percentage of people with high medical costs—those spending 10 percent or more of annual family income—to increase. But a Health Affairs Web First study released yesterday finds that during the 2007–09 recession...

Published Thu, Oct 25 2012 9:45 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Consumers, Health Care Costs, Employer-Sponsored Insurance, Pharma

Low-Income Patients In California: Experiences And Expectations

Editor’s Note: Another Health Affairs Blog post published today also discusses the California health care system and how the Affordable Care Act will affect the way the state meets the needs of low-income patients. Many low-income patients have...

Published Thu, Jul 14 2011 11:24 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Health Reform, Consumers, Health Care Costs, States, Quality

Implementing Health Reform: Insurance Cooperatives

The exchange and the reinsurance, risk adjustment, and risk corridor (3R) proposed regulations released by HHS on July 11 were only the first two in a series of exchange-related notices of proposed rulemakings (NPRMs) that will be rolled out in the coming...

Published Tue, Jul 19 2011 8:03 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Health Reform, Consumers, Insurance

We’re Only Human: Behavioral Economics And British Policy (Part 2)

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part post discussing behavioral economics and how it is being used by British policymakers. Part 1 focused mostly on the development and general principles of behavioral economics. Part 2 below discusses...

Published Wed, Jul 20 2011 12:22 PM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Public Health, Consumers, Policy, Obesity, Europe

Workplace Wellness Produces No Savings

During the last decade, workplace wellness programs have become commonplace in corporate America. The majority of US employers with 50 or more employees now offer the programs. A 2010 meta-analysis that was favorable to workplace wellness programs, published...

Published Tue, Nov 25 2014 9:00 AM by Health Affairs Blog

Filed under: All Categories, Nonmedical Determinants, Prevention, Employer-Sponsored Insurance

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